by Christopher Parks
Special to the Tri-State Defender

(from left) Building owner Norma Crow, Head Chef Michael Collins, and owner/founder Charles Duke stand on the top tier of their Creole-style deli restaurant, Beignet Café, which is located at the corner of G.E. Patterson and Mulberry in the building that was once home to the Tri-State Defender newspaper. (Photos by Christopher Parks)

Kitchen Manager and Head Chef Michael Collins lays down one of Cafe Beignet's deli-style sandwiches during the lunch rush. The chicken salad sandwich is one of more than ten sandwich entries on the cafe's menu.

Settled on the corner of Mulberry St. and G.E. Patterson, and around the block from the National Civil Rights Museum is Beignet Café – turning the building, which was once home to the Tri-State Defender, into a meeting table for elements from all over the South.

The restaurant, which opened in April, boasts a menu studded with myriad incarnations of not only coffee and confections, as the very name of the restaurant would imply, but also a deli-style array of sandwiches and soups that is likely to satisfy anyone looking for variety.

Items of note include the Salmon BLT – a meeting of Norwegian Salmon, peppered bacon, herb mayo, cherry tomatoes and mixed greens on toasted multigrain bread – and the titular beignets, which are New Orleans’ fried and powdered answer to the donut.

At the peak of the lunchtime rush, building owner Norma Crow shouts to one of the regulars, “We got it goin’ today!”

Beignet Café is situated near the train station and trolley lines, and is surrounded by what Crow estimates to be thousands of condominiums. As a result, the lunch rush at the café is just that – a rush that brings in a diverse crowd ranging from retirees to business people on lunch break to entire families for Sunday brunches (which include in-house live music performances, Crow points out).

“It’s a mixed group, and we’re very happy about that,” she said.

Crow, who is not only the owner of the building, helps restaurant owner Charles Duke with day-to-day operations. The pair met in 2007 when Duke first arrived in Memphis hoping to start a business.

Duke, a man with the dual title of owner and “Beignet Café Master of the Beignet,” grew up as a military brat in the care of his airman father.

“I was born in London, and stayed in Louisiana for five years because I moved around with my dad in the Air Force,” Duke said, “and he would always come up with these surprises when he cooked at the house. One day he cooked beignets, and that’s when I first got hooked on them.”

The architecture of the restaurant, which is a total renovation of the Tri-State Defender building, reflects that same worldliness. Customers are greeted by hanging fans, decorative rails, bright colors and other ornamentations, which make the café appear like nothing short of a subsection of Bourbon Street.

 “I think we have a really good atmosphere. You come in here and you feel like you’re in two or three places at once. You see candles on the walls that we restored, and they give us a very old-world feel. You walk to the counter and you see all the loud colors and all the spices and all the Cajun stuff that makes you feel like you’re in New Orleans,” Crow said.

“Not only that, but we almost always have good music playing. It’s not just the jazz you hear right now, but blues too, Isaac Hayes, Al Green, and a lot of other good stuff from right here in Memphis,” she added.

Head Chef Michael Collins shares that enthusiasm. “I think Creole food is lacking in Memphis. With this kind of atmosphere, you walk in and you just know it’s gonna have that New Orleans feel, and we have the food to complement that,” he said.

Duke, who previously worked as a facility manager in a Nashville hospital, says that he’s content with the way the café is functioning.

“This is my first restaurant, and on a scale of one to ten, it’s a ten-plus. Easy.”

The old Tri-State Defender building (File photo)